ABOUT JALUA DELL

Jalua Dell wants to light fire in your belly! She fights to share the magical feeling of when someone shares their art with you, or when you get to share your art with others. She believes this metaphorical fire, created through exchange of works, has the power to create true change and strengthen community. Community-based collaborative art is what compels her the most because it affects the group and the individual all at once.
As a versatile and playful artist Jalua has had creativity at the epicenter of her whole life. She constantly feels rewarded by the vast openness of possibility when being a creator. At the beginning of her artistic identity, her personal practices were deeply connected to her community, family, and friends. As she has grown, honing the practice of using her work to process emotions, channel energy, and create a career has also become an important part of her work. In the most solitary of forms Jalua is a visual artist, these works have been said to evoke a feeling of youth and happiness. She often uses text and saturated colors, through this you can see the influence street art and graffiti has had on her visual style. Jalua views street art as an immediate relay of artistic process and expression in the community. This interaction between audience and artist is what inspires Jalua to continue creating while pushing the boundaries of materials and message to create change.  In another form of interactivity, Jalua is a scenic designer.  She enjoys playing with dimensionality and interactive sets. She has found spatial innovation vital to design in the physical space and resource limitations of theater. With this requirement of innovation, she finds herself pushing boundaries to create designs that are unexpected and refreshing.
Jalua is an Oakland based artist with a variety of accomplishments and notable works. In 2023 she was awarded Theater Bay Area's "Open Doors" and "Reflections" awards for her sustainable wardrobe designs in "Forgetting Tree" a Z-space and Queer Cat Productions production. This production was also given a notable mention in KQED's "Best Theater of 2023". Her earlier works include scenic design for “The Winter’s Tale” a Ragged Wing Ensemble production at the Flight Deck Theater in Oakland which was awarded an “Outstanding Scenic Design” Theatre Bay Area Award (TBA) in 2017. She graduated from Oakland School for the Arts production design program in 2017 as well. Other accomplishments include stage managing for “Alice in Wonderland” a Mark Foehringer Dance Project SF production at the Cowell Theater, SF and the Associate Set Designer for “Romeo and Juliet” an Ubuntu Theater production at FLAX Art and Design, Oakland. She has also participated in international service-learning in the Dominican Republic with the non-profit Global Glimpse, as well as interning and working with West Edge Opera and the IATSE 107 Theater Union. She currently works as a stage manager, production manager, and costume creator with the circus production company Circosphere since 2018.